Project-Management Software to Unclog Revenue Flow

Barbara Jorgensen -- Expert Business Source, 2/1/2007 8:28:00 AM

Continental Plumbing Inc. was stuck. The 30-year-old trade contractor had reached the $3-$4 million revenue mark, but by 2002 it wasn’t growing beyond that. The Mira Loma, Calif., company wanted to become more aggressive in growing its business, but to do so the management team needed a better way to track the information flow among its multiple jobsites. And the project management software packages available were tailored toward general contractors—not medium-size trade businesses.

“There’s no off-the-shelf solution for the kind of thing we were looking for,” says Nathan Buckley, Continental Plumbing’s project administrator. So Buckley researched the project-management applications designed for general contractors, found one called Prolog from Meridian Systems, and in effect reverse-engineered its usage for a small trade.

Continental’s experience proves that smaller trades should not be put off by the complexities of project-management software, because they can – with a little innovative thinking – tune the software to suit their own needs.

Continental did have to invest in new computer equipment and a server to support the new system, but the payoff has been worth it. Since installing Prolog in 2004, the company has grown to $10 million in revenues, while adding only two employees to its staff of 75.

Continental worked on the implementation with PCI Group, a Las Vegas, Nev., consultancy, to re-do many of Prolog’s correspondence and other templates that were written from the contractor’s perspective. “We tweaked the software so that things work in reverse,” Buckley explains. “The letter stating, ‘you have so many outstanding submittals’ now reads, ‘we sent you x amount of submittals but haven’t heard back from you yet.’ ”

By sending out these types of request for information (RFI) letters to its general contractors each week, the plumber gets responses back more quickly than it had in the past.

“It definitely keeps us from dropping the ball,” says Buckley. “It reminds us about something before it’s too late and eliminates two people working on the same thing.”

The improvement in information flow has allowed the company to bid on more projects. “Before,” says Buckley, “we had to be careful not to bite off more than we could chew.”

On average, Buckley says, Continental Plumbing works with 10 general contractors and has 25 projects under way at any one time. Prolog provides a central database that allows Continental Plumbing’s project managers to submit and access project reports, monitor change orders, flag outstanding submittals and manage scheduling for all of those projects.

Even though most systems are tailored for big companies, Continental Plumbing has shown that project management software can benefit smaller trades as well. “I don’t think the typical trade contractor understands the benefit of information-organizing software like this,” says Buckley. “Most of these systems can scale up to enterprise size, but they can also be scaled down.” Small businesses, he says, should:

• Find out what kind of software your general contractors are using. [There also are many resources on the Internet for project-management applications, including listings from BuilderSpace, Capterra, and Business.com.]
• Try to get a demo of that software from your partner or a vendor
• Hire a consultant if necessary.

Barbara Jorgensen is a freelance writer based in Mansfield, Mass. John P. Mello Jr. contributed to this article.